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Originally Posted by Mr. P |
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Well I just saw the video, and what a chuckle. The Brits are as smug and snobbish as ever about cars, but unfortunately, they make some valid points even if it hurts to have to listen to them.
The interior of the Vette, and most American cars, is pretty pathetic. Americans are accustomed to American design, and to some degree we’re numbed into thinking plastic is good. The Japs know it, and they’re selling it back to us as fast as we’ll buy it. It’s cheap. The Brits are masters of understated elegance, and they’ve been trumping everyone for the last 75 years with style, and with performance too. The Germans and Italians hit it out of the park every now and then, but show me one interior in an American car that isn’t cheap plastic, or some 1950’s or 60’s looking toy-like industrial design, that can hold a candle to the best of what has been coming out of GB over and over again for decades.
They use real wood around the instrument clusters, it’s really the only way to fly. The Italians have inserted their beautiful Jaeger instruments into simple painted metal dashboards, and even that comes off as downright beautiful, because the gauges are so awesome. It is so superior than looking at an expensive injection molded dashboard. The Brits use leather like it should be used, while we use it like we think it needs to show up on the spec sheet as an option. The Brits use “REAL GLASS” in their gauges, with gunmetal blued or chome rings. What do we use………..”cheap plastic of course”, and it’s very easy for them to laugh at a Vette.
The Americans know how to make a 2-valve V8 run well, but so does everyone else. The TVR is an example. http://www.steve-p.com/sounds/griff.wav The slow model they used in the video outran the Vette with a 40-year old design that came from America after we didn’t think it was any good any more, and they have a home-built 400-hp six cylinder that will do better than that one did. They have a 12 that will outdo that, and the 450-hp Aston will eat just about anything. That’s why they can be so smug, because those snobs from GB know more about building fine cars than GM does. GM knows more about building them fast and cheap than most anyone else.
Would I like a Vette, sure. I have a lot of respect for the Corvette. I’d love to play around with one, but I’d sell it for something else very soon. I’d get a Porsche, a TVR, a Panoz, or something that had less “widette polyester count”, more leather and wood factor, and less ostentatious “gold chain NBA flash”.
The Vette has, for the last 20-years, been too much of a “disco queen” girls car for me, and in some cases, a fat girls car. You see blonde pony tails driving them everywhere, and many of them are older women, what the hell??. Just put it in “D”, turn up the AC, and off they go. Too much of a flashy “gold chain” look for me, but fast and generally a great engineering package, if they could just find (and kill) the guy who won’t let them put a world class interior in what could be a true world class car. The mechanicals will always get a Corvette on the “short list” but I don’t recall ever seeing one on the top of the list. I’m sure there are many men the governor of Calliefornia would approve of, driving Vettes too.
One thing for sure, the Brits know how to do a frigging headlight. GM doesn’t. I would find (and kill) the guy who did the headlights too (relax, this is just a figure of speech).
By comparison, the Vette headlight looks like a gay Japanese tourist. Hey, you guys really want to know what I think????
GM styling is at the total mercy of whoever happens to be politically in charge at the moment. It’s just one dynasty after another, and the American buying publilc is the reason we don’t have better interior designs. We buy the shit by the truckload. Europeans won’t.
The new Vette has a bit of that “OOOooohhhh YEaaaahhhh” Cadillac pointed prow corporate design studio crap someone found on the cutting room floor, showing through in the new Vette chin spoiler, and it looks out of place on an otherwise rounded body. Why else would it be there on a rounded body, other than the fact that the same gay stylist who did the angular Cadillac design got to take a shot at the Corvette too, and he left his mark. Nice piece of crap, guy. Otherwise, you would never in a 100-years see that element on that car.
The headlights are absolutely pitiful. Anyone looking for a new Vette, my advice is get one off the showroom now before they change over to this new design. The one in the showrooms right now, is probably going to be thought of as the best of the best for quite a while, even if the new ugly duckling is faster. If this was a stock graph on the NY Stock Exchange, it would show a steep downward slide starting right now and the front end styling is totally the reason, GM blew it, end of story.
Mr. P
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:flip: Sorry if I offended anyone. 
Independent rear susp, strength and durability of a leaf? Gee, I can't even imagine how much that improves the suspension. 
Plastic has give to it, you don't have to keep wacking the furniture polish to it every time you turn around, and it doesn't rot!
Let's see, 1st, 2nd,....4th..oops! I mean 3rd... 